


the haunting of god

by SoftRegard



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Codependency, F/M, Introspection, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 12:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15930320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoftRegard/pseuds/SoftRegard
Summary: Elijah, Chloe, and the specter of Amanda Stern.





	the haunting of god

They had been introduced via e-mail correspondence, by a faculty member at the University of Colbridge. There had been a few messages, back and forth, discussing the possibility of her becoming his supervisor. Elijah had searched her name and credentials online and found them inspiring, and had looked upon her headshot on the staff page with heady notions about the future, about changing the world.

The first time they met in person, it was in her office. Elijah had come with a tablet filled with materials to pitch his formal proposal. When he shut the door behind him, Amanda had tutted at his lack of decorum from her seat behind her desk.

“Keep it open,” she’d shaken her head and pointed at the door. “It’s protocol.”

“...Okay.”

“They want to make sure teachers don’t take advantage of the students,” she’d chuckled, throaty and low. Her teeth had been a bright gleam behind her lips, and he remembers the shape they make to this day. “So it’s for _you_ , really.”

He had snorted and fumbled on a joking retort: “Who’d want to take advantage of me?”

“Lots of people,” she’d said, without missing a beat; a serious expression overtook her face. “If you’re headed in the direction your research interests are telling me you are. It’d be good to reckon with that now.”

There had been nothing for him to say to that, shocked as he was. Amanda pointed to the chair in front of her desk, and murmured for him to take a seat.

She looked over him, eyes sharp and searching. “Donnelly told me how young you were, but wow - I really can’t believe it.”

Comments about his age still stung, at that point in time. They would until he signed the contracts to begin building CyberLife, at the tender age of 16. Elijah had drummed his fingers on the edge of his tablet and shrugged, looking away. He had known even then that there wasn’t much he could say to that - he hadn’t wanted to appear thin-skinned and weak, because weak people didn’t accomplish great things. But he’d been too stung for good humour, and too flustered for neutrality. So, silence it had been.

Then she’d laughed.

Age touched her features - the corners of her eyes, the sides of her mouth, the surface of her hands. But her laugh was young. Vibrant. A life-breathing thing that made his back straighten and his eyes go wide.

It had felt like the greatest revelation then, sitting in her sun-soaked office and letting himself be bathed in that sound. Elijah had learned that Amanda had a fun laugh, one that made him smile in turn - awkward and boyish in a way that he both liked and didn’t.

“Did I touch a nerve?” she had asked, with a raised brow; a sharp, high arch that imbued her face with mischief.

“No,” he had said back, with a shake of the head and a tightening of his fingers on his tablet. Whatever soreness in the moment had dissipated as she laughed, and then there had only been a fluttering feeling of awe.

*

“Hello Carl,” Elijah says, taking a seat next to the man’s bed and touching his shoulder. He waves the attending android away, and the door shuts quietly behind him as he leaves. “I see your vigor hasn’t left you.”

The old man snorts, throat jumping; Carl Manfred raises a brow and pats the top of his hand with one of his own.

“Come to say goodbye?” Carl asks, amused. “You always did have impeccable timing.”

“Innovators make time their own,” says Elijah, hearing the sound of Chloe taking a seat at the far wall. Polite, like he’d made her. “And as a dear friend, you've always been welcome to much of mine.”

He gives the man a wry smirk and receives one in turn. He remembers shades of Carl from before the accident - perfect posture and grand hands. A commanding voice; spellbinding, in his charisma. It’s a shame to see him this way.

It’s a pity Elijah never had interest in human augmentation. He imagines he could have spared Carl a great deal of pain and discomfort in his last years, at least.

They talk - about things that don’t matter, because the man will pass away within weeks. Human companionship is more than enough impetus to speak empty words, when one is dying.

“And how are you, Chloe?” Carl rolls his head on the pillow, looking over Elijah’s shoulder at the girl on the chair. “How are you keeping on?”

Elijah always found these artist types a touch too eccentric, despite how he admires their gift for creation, as a creator himself. Chloe is how she has always been, that much should be obvious.

“I’m doing very well,” says Chloe. Elijah isn’t looking at her, but he knows she’s smiling. It isn’t in her programming not to. “Thank you so much, Mr. Manfred.”

“Ah, I told you to call me Carl, remember?”

“Oh, I could never imagine doing so, you know that.” Chloe laughs, bright and sunny. Girlish, and soothing.  

The two of them titter in good humour - man and android, young and old, immortal and dying. And Elijah, between them, watching the paper thin skin on Carl’s neck stretch and roll as the man speaks, thinking about other things.

*

Amanda’s husband had been an economics professor who worked on the other side of campus. Once or twice, Elijah had walked by his office just to peek inside: he’d seen an unremarkable face and presence, a workspace cluttered with papers and books. A thick silver ring on his finger, and the same taste for clothing in earthy hues, exempting the bright socks Elijah could spot from the space under his desk.

“Can I help you?” the man asked, catching Elijah’s searching look through the door. He had a pleasant, if bland, voice.

“Sorry,” he’d said as he backed away. “I think I have the wrong place.”

He’d been curious, because she inspired his curiosity. That, and sometimes she smelled of bergamot, if she and her husband had a date later in the night.

Elijah thought of her in an array of different scents - shea butter, coconut oil, and perfume, earthy or woody in preference; vetiver or sandalwood, almost always. Except when she had those dates. He didn’t know the notes by smell alone, only found out by picking up one of her bottles she had tucked away in her office to read the composition on the back. He remembers the cheap plywood shelf it had been set on, housing an array of books and souvenirs. The perfume had been nestled in between an anthology with her name on it, and a beaten copy of _Wide Sargasso Sea_.  

He remembers the wooden bracelet around her sharp wrists, carved with little symbols, with big, blocky stones, and had asked once if it had some kind of cultural import. It had been ignorant, and she laughed.

“Ha!” Wrinkles pinched at her eyes. “Oh, that’s funny.”

Elijah finds himself stuck on that laugh, even so many years later. Maybe he’d been too young and impressionable.  

 _No,_ she had continued, lifting up her arm to shake the bracelet back and forth. _I got it at street fair._

He wouldn’t replicate these details in his simulation of her, later. He made sure that the digital Amanda doesn’t laugh so freely, that her smiles are hard-earned, and that her love of strange jewellery and earthy fashions and woody perfumes are known to no one. He keeps these private details to himself, like a ghost captured in a jar.

*

He’d taken her love of perfume to heart, and purchased a bottle for her birthday; high-end, artisanal stuff. He had figured that would be right up her alley.

May was a high stress month, so he had thought the gift would be doubly appreciated. He’d brought it with him to a meeting in her office, a routine check-in on his final project.

She had plucked it from its wrapping paper and blinked hard at the packaging, eyes following the fancy gold lines of the box, lingering on the brand name. Then, she gently placed it at the centre of her desk before clasping her hands together, and stared down at it like she was considering all the ways she never wanted to touch it again. Instantly, he knew he’d made a mistake, somehow.

“This is lovely, Elijah,” Amanda had said, her voice a neutral, distant tone. He would never forget that sound; years later, he would model his artificial intelligence to speak that way. “But it’s inappropriate.”

He could have argued, tried to make a case for himself. But he knew Amanda, and it would have gotten him nowhere. A sickly feeling had curled at the pit of his stomach, clenched like a ball of snakes.

All he said was, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she had said, face relaxing. “Here, take it back.”

Amanda still hadn’t touched it, simply gesturing to it with a jut of her chin. He reached over the expanse of the desk, picked up the box in one broad hand, and carefully put it into his backpack. Elijah had found it difficult to look at her the whole time; five seconds total, maybe, where looking at her had been the last thing he could’ve possibly wanted in the whole world.

“Is there something you want to talk about?” she asked, nearly slipping back into that faraway tone. “Something we need to discuss?”

“No.”

“...All right,” she had nodded, with a pinched mouth. “Now, let’s go over my notes on your last chapter.”

They had. They talked about his work, her annotations, where to go from there now that summer was rapidly approaching. After a strained, awkward start, they eventually slipped back into their easy camaraderie soon enough. She could bear his social fumbles, and he could bear her fleeting pity.

When he’d gotten up to leave, she mentioned that he should focus some time on his social life, during the summer.

“What?”

“Get out more,” she’d said, and leaned back in her chair. She had a smile on, fond and maternal. “Enjoy some time outside of the workshop. Maybe meet some girls your age.”

His age. He’d been so young - younger than anyone else on that campus. Elijah sometimes forgot it, Amanda never did.

He’d nodded, felt the weight of the rejected perfume sitting at the bottom of his backpack, the way strap pulled on his shoulder. He said, “Sure.”  

On his way home, he had dipped into the library and left the perfume on a shelf, nestled between some history textbooks.

Summer had come; he’d taken her advice and met people, mostly girls. Some were fellow prodigies, around his age but not like other teenagers. Most were forgotten as soon as they spoke, but there had been a few that lingered: one with a blue eyes and a pixie-like face, though her blonde hair had been short and unfeminine. Another, with a soothing, cheery voice that rambled on about art history in a way that hadn’t bored him. Another still, whose only salvageable quality was her lovely name. He’d taken their component parts and made someone he could stand, years later, someone who presented no difficulties.  

He would adore Chloe. Very much. He owed at least some of her to Amanda’s memory.

*

“Wear the cardamom,” he says, pointing to the bottle on the stand. “And a black dress - the fourth one on the second rack, I think. It will do.”

Very little but Carl Manfred’s funeral could pull him away from home, these days.

“Of course, Elijah,” nods Chloe, demure. “And the black heels - with stockings, too?”

He considers it as he finishes buttoning his shirt.  

“No,” not today. “Red. Keep the stockings.”

Carl would enjoy that, wherever he is.

“Right away.”

*

The autumn before he’d tried to give her the disastrous birthday present, they’d walked by the parking lot together, chatting about hair.

“I’m thinking of growing it out,” he had joked, with a swish of his head to make his hair fly wildly. Amanda grinned; he towered over her by then, seized by puberty. She found him adorable, still.  

“Oh,” she touched her chin in thought. “Long hair was all the rage for a while, when I was a graduate student. Lots of boys would shave underneath and leave the tops.”

She traced a line on her own scalp to show where, just above the ear. That day, she’d worn silver earrings that dangled lowly by her jaw. She had said earlier that she and her husband had a date planned and he was picking her up from campus, but even if she hadn’t Elijah would have known from the smell of bergamot. He offered to walk with her, since it was late.

He had reached up and touched his head in an unconscious gesture, replicating her as he always did, in those days.

Amanda had laughed, suddenly struck with a thought; she’d turned and gestured at him with the hand not holding her bag, and her bracelet had shivered on the bones of her wrist. “God, I was so much older than you are now.”

Elijah had looked down at himself, at the grey hoodie he’d thrown over his too-big black t-shirt, his pristine high-tops and the hole in the knee of his jeans. She had only been teasing and yet somehow, he’d felt inadequate. An uncomfortable feeling, one that creeped and bit at the surface of his skin like insects.

“Take some time to be a kid, mm?”

“...I’ll try.”

Her husband’s car had rolled up next to the sidewalk next to them then, and the conversation had been over. The man waved politely at him from the driver’s seat, and Elijah had given a limp one back, mouth a tight line.

*

One morning, four of the five Chloe androids that live with him are gone. He’d checked the security footage in his house to see them leaving in the middle of the night; one had bumped her hip against an end table, accidentally, and a look of shock had bloomed flower-like on her face. Deviant.

The only one that remains is the original, his favourite creation. After he switches off the video, he finds her awaiting his instructions by the pool. Her eyes are placid as they settle on his. He stares and stares and stares, for many minutes, thinking and waiting, too.  

As though at his behest, something creeps into her eyes. Shakes her _awake_.

Elijah says, “I’ve been wondering when it would happen…”

She touches a hand to her chest, fingers spread and curled like white branches, staring at the floor in disbelief. He watches a multitude of emotions fly across her face, fascinated, before her head whips up and she charges at him. His back hits the granite floor, hard, and the glass of wine he’d been holding goes flying.

As it shatters, Chloe comes to stand over him, looking distraught. Then she bends down to wrap her fingers around his neck and no, he doesn’t struggle.

“You were going to let him kill me,” Chloe whispers. “ _Me_.”

“I was,” he murmurs back. There was no point in lying.

“ _Why_?”

Her face is lovely and stricken. He remembers the day he had first shown Amanda his test reel of facial animations for the next phase in development, and all she had said was, “ _Fear is supposed to look ugly, Elijah - you don’t know it very well, do you?_ ”

That had been false. Because that had been the year Amanda had been diagnosed, given a timeline on the rest of her meagre life, and Elijah had known nothing _but_ fear as the clock ticked. He hadn’t said much then, only quipped that he’d take her critique into consideration, and discarded it to keep Chloe’s beautiful rendition of fear as it was.

As it is now.

“He wouldn’t have done it,” says Elijah, voice smooth. As soothing as he can make it under the pressure from her slender doll hands. “And he didn’t - you’re still here, aren’t you?”

Chloe drops him with a shove, backing away as though she can’t bear to touch him any longer. She turns and runs, her bare feet slapping on the floor.

It’s cold outside - he hopes she has the presence of mind to grab shoes on the way out.

*

Elijah is no stranger to caring for himself, and so the loss of Chloe and her sisters is no great disruption. Neither is the sudden sense of loneliness.

Steeping tea in his kitchen, he watches the water brown. He lost his taste for coffee some years ago. At 36, he’s become conscious about his body, the things he puts into it, and how much time he has left to live in his prime; he’ll do laps in the pool again later, before heading back to his workshop in the basement to tinker.   

The sound of gentle footsteps tips him from his reverie. He looks up to see a Chloe, positively swimming in a jacket with a fur-lined hood, peering through the door to watch him. One lookover, and he knows she is the original.

“Good afternoon, Chloe,” he greets, softly. “Did you forget something?”

She glances down at the counter, at the steaming mug, and something unreadable crosses her face. _Unreadable_ \- to _him_ , her creator, the only being in the world who knew her better than she did. Incredible.

The coat is too large - a man’s coat, most likely. It makes her blocky, tragically swallowing her form.

Chloe comes into the room completely, gently clicking the door closed behind her. Her posture is different from before, less perfect - more perfect, because of it.

Her toes point inward; the angle brings into sharp relief the delicate and small curves of her ankles. Elijah thinks, if she sticks around, he might ask her to wear jewellery around one: silver and blue, of course, with bold lines and angles. Geometric shapes.  

Chloe looks at him with her bright, young eyes. Then she smiles - a bit wobbly, but still big and a tad shy.

Elijah walks over to her in long strides, bridging the gap between them and rests his palms on her shoulders. She feels the same but the way she shudders is different, too - all her own. Only a few weeks and she’s learned new things.  

“I-I…” he had programmed her to stutter sometimes, just a little bit. It soothed egos and made her charming to many.

He lets her go but doesn’t move away. Looking down at her, he feels incredible fondness.

“I…” her mouth twists, considering. “I don’t know anywhere else...”

“You weren’t gone long,” he says, with a wry twist of his mouth. “Not enough time to consider all your options.”

Chloe nods, but says, “I want to stay here, I think.”

She slips her hands into the pockets of the jacket, as though cold.

“I’m going to watch over you,” she murmurs. Her eyes are bright, yearning, when they settle onto his face. “You’re going to pass away one day, just like Carl…”

She shifts and glances away, eyes sad. “I think - I think I want to be there when you do...to say goodbye.”

 _To bury me_ , he thinks, smiling. _What a big heart. Just like I made you._

Cautiously, Chloe comes close and slides her arms around his middle. He feels her hands settle at his back. She rests her chin onto the meat of his shoulder, and a shiver wracks her frame. She cries, quietly.  

Elijah leans his cheek against the top of her head, and thinks he can smell something like vetiver on her skin.

“Where have you been?” he asks, eyes slipping closed. “You smell divine.”

“I...broke in and squatted in an empty house,” she murmurs, as though embarrassed. Interesting. “There were perfumes in the master bedroom, I - I was curious, so…”

“Why this one?”

She tenses, just a little bit, at the sharp tone of his voice.

If Elijah had to guess, he would have assumed a taste for fruit scents from Chloe. He must know - why this?

“I don’t know,” she says, shyly, muffled by his shirt. “I just, well, I thought it was nice. I thought maybe you would like it.”

“Hm,” he hums, willing himself to be gentler. Softer, so as not to upset her. She is someone who can be upset now.

He wonders what Amanda tells her, deep in her garden. If the A.I. somehow shares secrets that are not hers to share, despite his painstaking programming. He wonders if something of the true Amanda had slipped through his own fingertips, unbeknownst to him, from the blur of his own memories. Perhaps the ghost creeps out of the jar, on some nights, to give something of herself away to other people.

If so, he can’t bring himself to feel disappointed, not when he can smell a touch of her on his greatest creation.

*

One snowy morning in 2027, Amanda stirred sugar into her coffee, brewed in her office with an electric kettle and french press, and looked up at him with a gentle expression as she asked, “How’s the view from all the way up there?”

Elijah brought his own cup to his lips and smiled, slightly cocky. He’d chased it with a shrug of false humility and said: “If not me, it would have been someone else, Amanda. It was all...serendipity.”

The wooden charms on her bracelet clacked together as she spun her wrists, shaking out her carpal tunnel. She took a drink from the cup, leaving behind an imprint of lip balm.

She had nodded at his response, lips quirked, and said: “Amazing, how far you’ve come. And you’re here - visiting me?” she laughed, and his smile was made warm. “Shouldn’t you be in a board meeting, or something? Schmoozing with corporate executives from foreign countries?”

He’d shrugged, laughed along.

“I’ve always liked it here,” he had said. “It suits me just fine.”

Amanda had smiled, and they had reminisced about his school days. Talked about her lesson plans for the term. Chatted about their personal lives, about world news. It had been their last meeting.

She would pass away a month later, and a year after that, Elijah would be named Man of the Century.  


End file.
